


Burning Dreams

by Onceyourempire



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, How dare I write so much sadstuck, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-08
Updated: 2011-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onceyourempire/pseuds/Onceyourempire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In your dreams, you remember. But it's not enough, and it's never enough. You'll never remember enough to protect him or appreciate them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Another sadstuck fic! This one was inspired by the obscene amount of Alpha!Dave sadness on my tumblr dash. Sometimes, when I listen to music, I take lyrics I like and put them into docs to use as later inspiration. That happened here too. I've come to the point where I can't listen to Heaven Help Us without thinking of Alpha!Dave dying and Alpha!Bro internally screaming over his body.
> 
> It's really kawaii. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

**{You don’t know a thing about my sins, how the misery begins. You don’t know, so I’m burning, I’m burning.}** \- [Heaven Help Us by My Chemical Romance]

 

You don’t remember much but what you do remember is bright and burning.

Heat. Clocks? So much doom, so many dead ends.

And you only remember in dreams.

Dreams of your favorite human being laying on the ground with his sword in his chest. Dreams of one of your favorite girls sort of shooting you and then the other dying with you again. You and your girls rise again and one meets your favorite boy while you and your sister meet the end face on.

You wake from these dreams with your cheeks wet and a distinct ache in your heart.

You think your baby brother knows of these dreams. He must. He must have come in while you slept and seen you crying in your sleep and whispering names that mean nothing to either of you. You wonder how this affects him.

There is so much neither of you know. You know more (so much more, more than you want to) than he does. You almost know what you were, you know what you’ve been. You know your virtues and your sins, especially the sins. He doesn’t know those because you don’t want him to. He doesn’t know what the game will do. He knows how to keep his friends safe. He knows that the world is on the edge of a great and terrible change. He knows his limits. You pray (in moments of faith and desperation and rememberance of your painfully Catholic name) that it’s enough.

Neither of you know why you cry when you sleep.

When you don’t dream of what was, you dream of what will be. Time is your partner but it will not be tamed. You don’t control it or where it will go. It decides what you must see and you are dragged along screaming and biting and sobbing until the moment you jolt awake, shaking like a scared puppy on Red Bull.

The moment you see most often in the future is your own death.

You, David Michael Strider, age 32, know exactly when and why and how and where you will die.

You never cry when you wake up from those dreams.

You instead take a warm shower until you stop shaking and can stand without falling over. You make a real breakfast for your brother, wave off his concerned/amused/baffled looks and then lock yourself away in your so-called “office” for hours.

You would die for your brother a million times over, just like you would have in your vivid, bright, burning dreams. In your dreams, you always wished you could have taken his place. You finally have the chance.

You’re not scared of dying.

You scared of leaving him behind, of hurting him, of breaking him like who you were was broken.

And most of all-

You’re scared that you’ll fuck it up and stay alive while he dies.

That’s why you shake, why you cry, why you pray.

Now if only you could remember how to do it all right and who made it right. If only you could remember more than your broken heart and the blood and the heat and the time shaving the seconds off lives.

You keep dreaming and keep trying to remember. You owe it to your brother to remember anything that could save him.

(And maybe you owe it to them, your girls and your boy and the other brother, your hero, to remember. But you never remember them, not enough to count. It’s never enough.)


End file.
